BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
| No. V. | AUGUST 1817. | Vol. I. |
ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.
OBSERVATIONS ON
"Macbeth and King Richard III. an Essay, in Answer to Remarks on some of the Characters of Shakspeare; by J. P. Kemble."
MR EDITOR,
Though arrived at that time of life when men are supposed partial to past times, I will fairly own the superior powers of my countrymen, of the present times, in writing and composition. Yet I may be allowed to remark, that the confidence of publication is at least equal to the abilities, in point of writing, possessed by the present generation. Authorship, formerly a rare and envied distinction, is now so common as to lift a man (I should say a person, for it is now as much a female as a male quality) but little above the mass of men around him; and if we cannot say, with quite as much justice as formerly, "Scribimus indocti doctique,"—for I will own there is more literature among us than our fathers and mothers possessed,—we may at least say, that every thing is published which is written, whether altogether worthy of publication or not.
I am sorry that, in my opinion, the present volume may be classed among those which it might be held unnecessary to publish, because our respect for the author would incline us to wish, that nothing should come from his pen which the public should think unworthy of him. It is indeed an answer to another book or pamphlet of Mr Whatley, sanctioned by an editor of eminence, Mr Steevens. But if the former book was "idle and unprofitable," that affords but an inadequate apology for multiplying the offence, by writing another of the same kind.
I am aware, however, that on the subject of which this little Volume treats, a book may claim the attention of the public on slighter grounds than on any other topic. Shakspeare is so much the god of British idolatry, that every work relating to him is popular. Hence the numberless critics and commentators who have been read with avidity, not from their own merits, either of learning or of taste, but merely because they criticised or commented on Shakspear, and, like the scholiasts on Homer, have borrowed an importance from their illustrious subject, with little intrinsic value in their own productions. The works of Shakspeare are, "not to speak it profanely," the Bible of the drama to us. Their commentators, like those of that sacred book, are received with an interest which their subject only could confer on sometimes very dull and frivolous productions. One author of considerable eminence produced an Essay, very similar to Mr Kemble's, to prove the valour of Falstaff. Mr Kemble enters now, for the first time, the field of authorship, to vindicate the personal courage of Macbeth,—to controvert the degrading distinction which Mr Whately had supposed between that personage and Richard III. The first, according to that critic, "having not intrepidity, like Richard, but merely resolution, proceeding from exertion, not from nature,—betraying, in enterprize, a degree of fear,
